


If My Heart Was A House (You'd Be Home)

by beware_phangirl (dantiloquent)



Series: One Shots [5]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slow Build, Songfic, kind of idkkk, one is a cashier k cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3415424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dantiloquent/pseuds/beware_phangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It’s started to rain, sluggish swipes of water toppling onto them, and Phil looks like Van Gogh’s De Sterrennacht, with streaks of navy and effulgent obsydian and airy creams. He wonders if he’ll start to run in the rain, if he’ll start to blur and blend like watercolour.</em><br/>Otherwise known as the au where Phil is a cashier who doodles on envelopes and Dan starts to wonder how long things can last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If My Heart Was A House (You'd Be Home)

**Author's Note:**

> basically i wanted to write a fic for If My Heart Was A House by Owl City because it makes me emo and this idea is what i came up with, it's barely linked ik but yes i think i'm proud of this? (btw the beginning is meant to read rushed and the whole thing is odd tbh.) Title from the song mentioned above. Feedback is always appreciated <33

_It makes me smile because you said it best  
I would clearly feel blessed if the sun rose up from the west  
Flower balm perfume, all my clothes smell like you  
Cause your favorite shade is navy blue_  
-  
It’s raining. It’s raining but that doesn’t matter; because what matters, what he can only focus on, is each urgent, robotic stride cutting through onto the street. Each step is bringing him closer - to what, he doesn’t know. But he needs to move and he needs to be something, just for now. The rain is coming down in violent torrents around him, the lights of the straggling shops battling with the sludge of shadow. He’s walking through the center of the road, like everyone does in town, but this time he’s alone, no figures in sight if he bothers to look, and it’s 6 PM. Each breath is cold as it falls from his cracked lips, racking his lungs and screaming in the form of cloud once it escapes. The inclement air is making his eyes water, like the oil his mother used to give him when he had a cold. The scent would hover in his room for days, an unwelcome tenant, and it’s the scent of illness and family he has but doesn’t know.

He keeps walking.

He sees one shop, open amongst the skeletons of others, and his jaw has started to grind as his fist clenches, so he walks towards it. 

Water drips in plops down onto the tiled floor, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t wipe his feet before striding through the shelves of childrens’ pencil cases and novelty pens. One hand lifts, quivering, to bring his hair out of his eyes. His nails are ragged and chewed, digging into paper as they wrap around a packet of gum - strong and peppermint in flavour; there’s mud caked in them and a few are red raw around the edges, destroyed paintings in blood frames. Throwing the packet rather forcefully onto the counter, he finds a pound coin in the depths of a pocket and fishes it out, thumb lightly scraping dirt from the engraving before letting it drop with a resonant clang on the surface. His foot percusses the ground, _taptaptap_.

“You in a rush?” The cashier asks, upbeat and distant in his brain. The words barely register, and he casts him a glance. He hasn’t noticed any colour, recently, everything’s been rain and winter and now he’s challenged with blue. He was always told to find adjectives in high school, and he finds himself flicking through muddles of letters: cerulean, cobalt, azure, ultramarine. None of them really fit. 

“Something like that,” he says. His voice comes out hoarse, like he hasn’t used it for years, but he has, he uses it too much considering he’s in a gap year, and he hates how close to tears it sounds. He just sees the welcoming smile fall from the cashier’s face as he walks away, thrusting the packet far into his pocket.

-

He’s waiting for a bus which won’t arrive for another hour. The stop is a handful of minutes from the shops, just starting to dip into the suburban aspect of the city; normally he can make it from work, but today he hasn’t. It doesn’t mean much to him. It’s threatening to rain again, an army of cloud in his peripheral as his fingers play with the hook of string on his coat. The fabric is flimsy, and he’s just found a tear in the seams. The occasional car drives past, caught up in its own journey, and each is just a selection of metallic colour in his gaze. He thinks that he could easily stand here until it grows dark and bears dawn again, could happily stay here for a chosen number of eternities because he doesn’t need to think, doesn’t have situations pressed down on him. He feels like one of those kid dolls, seasoned with other people’s desires and that’s a crap metaphor, and that’s what this is - crap.

He doesn’t hear the splashes of dead rain on concrete, nor does he register the new blend of colour on the edge.

“Hey.” 

His head snaps up, eyes bulging as he looks round and wonders who would want to talk to him. Eyes meeting with the cashier he encountered a few weeks back, neither move as their gazes lock.

“You,” he whispers doubtfully, and it’s like the words lightly push the other into movement because he nods and smiles.

“I walk home this way, and I saw you standing here and I was wondering if you’re okay? I’m Phil, by the way.” It’s started to rain, sluggish swipes of water toppling onto them, and Phil looks like Van Gogh’s _De Sterrennacht_ , with streaks of navy and effulgent obsydian and airy creams. He wonders if he’ll start to run in the rain, if he’ll start to blur and blend like watercolour. 

“Dan. I missed my bus,” he replies dreamily. He’s smiling, suddenly; he’s not _being_ but he’s not _not_ being, he’s in this numb limbo, so he’s enjoying the moment, drinking it in like lungfuls of chlorine gas. 

“Well that sucks,” Phil comments, eyes casting long, intrigued glances his way.

“Not really,” he continues. The water has started to lace his eyelashes with beads, and he likes looking at the world like he’s separated from it by frosted glass. “I wasn’t going to get on it, anyway.”

Phil smiles gradually, and then he’s laughing. It’s curious against the drilling of the rain, light and carefree and like shards of broken glass on the floor. Phil’s laughing, so he’s laughing, too.

Phil says something like “you’re funny”, and then they agree that to say that is horribly unoriginal. They exchange dry, despondent sentences of introduction, and then Phil’s tugging on his sleeve, and he blinks the glass away.

“If you’re not going to take the bus, will you come back with me? I’d hate for you to get cold,” Phil says, and he nods and keeps his mouth clamped shut to restrict his heart from leaping out. Phil’s fingers remain wrapped round his sleeve cuff, swinging it back and forth as he leads him. The rain billows in size, becoming a storm highlighted with lightening that whips across the sky, and they take subdued risks in the forms of trees and open spaces; they walk under a bridge, and they can hear the drums of rainfall echo in clashes of hooves.

Phil takes him to a comfy home in a family street, with flower pots on the window sills and a teapot in the kitchen. His parents are out, he says. Pointing him towards a bathroom and a warm shower, he smiles once before walking into the kitchen. He has a shower like he’s told, feeling scorching polka dots on his face, and when he emerges there’s a pile of clothes by the door.

The rain has stopped. A ticking clock betrays the time, and it’s ten, somehow.

“Was your shower okay?” Phil appears from a bedroom of posters.

“Yes. Thank you,” he adds as an afterthought, fingers curled round the cusp of the sweater Phil’s lent him. The clothes are delicate around him, twirled in a supple embrace showered with the scent of apple washing powder. There’s no loose thread for him to tug. 

“Did you want anything?” Phil asks, walking through into the kitchen. He hovers where he is until Phil nods him through. It’s a room of pastel yellow walls, the tea pot left on one polished surface while the kettle boils on another. He watches the steam rise.

“No, thank you.”

“Okay.”

The kettle pings, and Phil pours two mugs. “Take this, then.”

“But I said I didn’t want anything,” he asks quizzically. Phil smiles, pressing the mug into his hands and guiding his fingers around the warm surface.

“I know.”

His lips twitch upwards, too, smiling around the mug as he lifts it to his lips. The chocolate flows down his throat, the ceramic scolding his lips lightly.

“It’s stopped raining, so I wondered if you wanted to go outside? It’s very pretty out there,” Phil offers after a few minutes of carefully sipping the beverage. There’s a collection of framed photos, and he wonders about their history as if they’re characters out of a book.

“Okay.”

It _is_ clear outside; the storm has wrung out most of the clouds, the air a sharp blade on his tongue. Everything’s still and he’s scared to walk out onto the wooden patio, almost, like one footfall will make the muted clouds blow away. There’s two sun chairs in the garden, near a flower bed, and the lawn stretches out between vines and petals. Night hangs over the air, and all he can do for a second is stare.

“Am I keeping you from anyone?”

“Hm?” he turns his head to Phil, his head still dazed.

“Will anyone miss your presence?”

“No,” he lies.

“Good,” Phil says. He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just smiles stupidly. Walking over to one of the chairs, Phil sits, patting the other. He’s still smiling as he walks over, the sun swinging low on its string in front of them.

-

He goes to the shop more, casual visits suddenly becoming a daily occurrence. They talk for differing lengths of time, minutes strung out on necklaces before he decides it’s time to leave. When he does, he either walks alone with broken ghosts of conversation bouncing alongside the pebbles on the concrete, or with Phil beside him in rose-tinted silence. He becomes familiar with Phil’s colleagues, at least up until first name basis, though he stays close to the counter. When Phil’s serving someone, he slips round to the space filled with shelves of collector cards, and he stares at the Terms And Conditions on the gift cards, and the ingredients ingrained like tar stains on sweet packets. When words are at a loss, Dan watches Phil doodle on an envelope as he witters on about some happening, watching as lines of biro like bones form fantastical figures. They laugh and Phil will sometimes open a packet of Randoms - but nothing beats their time in his garden. 

-

Their parents meet when the Lester’s are organising some sort of social gathering for Easter, and it’s all adults laughing through clamped teeth and year old perfume, with little baskets of lemon drops and mini eggs in each room. They hover around long enough for introductions to be made before escaping outside. There’s an old swing set in a hidden part of the garden.

-

The year has started to be stretched thin, the temperature swelling with the happiness in his throat, and the colour of the chairs’ fabric paling in the rays of butter sun. Dan’s legs are crossed at the ankle and the laughter fades, and he’s biting his lip. The grain of his jeans blurs in his vision and then he’s feeling a hand on top of his. Wide eyes jump up in surprise, and he can see Phil’s hand wrapped round his, hiding the red of his knuckles with cotton skin. He can see the lines of creases in Phil’s hand, like washing lines hung between balconies, or childhood kite strings, and there’s the skeleton of a phone number written in dying ink. His eyes continue up to Phil, and when Phil looks back, his eyes remind Dan of the polished Henbury meteorite they were shown in Astronomy, once. Everything’s suddenly about blue and quickened pulses, and there’s a word he came across once, mamihlapinatapai, and he can’t stop thinking about it as Phil fills his head with molten rock. 

He can’t think of the last time he couldn’t breathe properly.

-

He gets used to the feel of Phil’s hand on his, but the event is kept to themselves and only communicated through gazes crossing. When that happens, it’s like two pieces of metal clanging together. Their two secrets start to grow, grow amongst the roses and dandelions that have started to be washed away in the breeze.

They say that to try the same thing over and over and expect a different result is insanity, and Dan recognises this when notions are clogged in the concaves of dark. But he still goes to Phil.

The occults start to grow apart and become two separate saplings, neither knowing what the other looks like, and he wonders how many times he can drink coffee with wobbly fingers before it spills.

(Phil starts offering him Haribo rings, though, and Dan’s not sure how he feels about that.)

-

Summer wilts again. The days are becoming shorter each day, though it’s only identified by the distortions of rose hues and spills of watered-down blood reds in the sky; or by the time Venus and Jupiter are visible, like vampire bites in the atmosphere. His eyes can’t rest on Phil without azurite meaning guilt and curling fingers. Phil smiles and he can’t find himself smiling believably back.

Time has run out.

“I’m going to University,” Dan whispers, voice shaking and tripping on a high wire. His heart takes leaps and he’s squeezing the hem of the chair cover.

Silence.

“When?” Phil says flatly, and everything’s already tumbling.

He wonders how long silence can be dragged out before it tears and words tangle in the threads, “Tomorrow.” Each vowel is caught on tears and Phil nods once, barely a bump in the fabric of space between them. He doesn’t ask why Dan’s only telling him now, and Dan doesn’t reply because he doesn’t know.

Phil’s hand isn’t on his anymore. He’s silent, too silent, and Dan’s confused. Everything’s crumbling and detonating in streaks of vermillion rips and bitter neon patches in corneas, sparks pricking his gut in venomous bites. He’s squeezing his eyes shut to obscure the watercolour as it drains away into ash, but now there’s an ache pounding incessantly at his skull. The rips and patches dance erratically. It’s like when he was little and pressed his fists to his eyes to create kaleidoscopes - only they don’t go away, no matter how many times he blinks. Tears stick his lashes together and they stab each time he blinks; and he longs for smudged _De Sterrennacht_ and insanity and mamihlapinatapai, because anything is better than stumbling around flower beds to escape before finding he can’t shake Phil from his mind.

Tomorrow.

-

The inherent guilt had made him change his train time, and he’s so glad he did change it as he rushes down the high street, shoelaces slapping the stone slabs and eyes squinting against the bitter wind. Each shop is a wasted space of colour and he knows how many steps he has left until he gets there, the one sign of his goal teasing the horizon. The sky is a canvas for Autumn, with worn blues and sprawled clouds, and part of him aches for woven pinks and summer flowers.

He swings open the shop door. The store’s fresh and empty, and the cashier - Abby, he thinks her name is - looks up in surprise.

“Dan,” she relaxes and smiles. “Is there anything I can help you with? Are you okay?” she frowns, then, hands letting go of the pen she’s clutching.

He avoids the question.

“Where’s Phil?” he gasps. She doesn’t reply quick enough, and he’s throwing his gaze around the shop, heart thudding and lungs burning and _phil phil phil phil_.

“Dan, I’m sorry, Phil called in sick today,” she answers, voice low with her sympathy, but all he can think is that she doesn’t know why, doesn’t know that it’s urgent as she asks, “Is something wrong?”

All he can do is swallow roughly and shake his head.

“I could leave a note, if that helps?”

Dan shakes his head again, turning his back to her and leaving.

On the walk back, his hand keeps reaching out, grasping thin air.

-

He goes to University. He doesn’t have a photo, doesn’t have a number - it was always a spontaneous thing, and he was never one for phones. He learns to combat climbing piles of paper and information, facts and lessons that seep through the maudlin gaps of his mind. A circle of friends builds around him, and Uni works out; it’s better than what he had before, when he only had a few friends and a monotonous job that etched scripts into his brain. 

There’s a shop in the city, part of the same chain as the one Phil worked in. He enters, fueled with self-pitiful hope, but the cashier is older and she chews gum as she asks him what he wants.

He forgets, almost. Phil’s a painting of snapped possibilities, and as time goes on he becomes the one friend who sends little pangs to his heart when he does remember.

He stops coming home for Christmas.

-

_We got older and I should have known_  
(Do you feel alive?)  
That I'd feel colder when I walk alone  
(Oh, but you'll survive)  
So I may as well ditch my dismay  
(Bombs away... Bombs away...) 

-

Years later, and he’s got the English Major he’s always wanted under his belt. As he walks along the high street, he wonders if each blank face knows where he’s been and that he hasn’t belonged here for a long while, now. The cobbles are the same underfoot, but all the shops have transformed, or gone entirely, and the last time he saw a sky this colour was the Day Before.

He walks past the shop, and he can remember the path to the bus stop, past worn door frames and muddled alley ways. His feet almost lead him that way, but it’s morning and he’s not just someone with a gap year anymore.

He heads to the library, because it’s something familiar and he has no other way to occupy his time. The building reclines at the top of a hill, and it’s made of great expanses of glass splayed over the grey, and it has long curving steps - like the ones Cinderella trips on as she runs from the palace. Inside, it’s the same sleeping atmosphere with thick carpet, open plan shelves with books that may not have been moved since he left. He likes that idea.

And then he sees them. It’s odd, seeing an adult sat in the teenage book section, and if time would allow it, a smile would be tugging at his lips because it’s so quintessentially them. But the smile doesn’t have room on his lips because words and shock are tripping in the black holes between his teeth, eyes flitting from the notepad occupied with snippets of figures, to the character who’s drawing them, washing lines and kite ribbons curling around a chewed pencil.

A whisper creeps out, reaching their ears, somehow, and they look up. Age twines round burnished blue eyes, and their voice is the same as his name falls from their lips. The book falls to the ground in a flutter of weak wings as they rush towards each other; they throw their arms around each other and finally find time to squeeze a smile into sighs of relief. They’re saying something like “your mum told me you were back from university but I never thought-” but it’s drowned out by relieved “I found you oh my fucking God you’re here” uttered over and over in a quickened heart beat. 

And it doesn’t happen, at first, the insanity isn’t cured straight away, but it does happen, when the hues are rough and descending into monochrome, when emotions get out in words laced with drink, which totter and keel over as colours collide. They don’t know that it will but they know it can, and maybe a pinch of consonants and tedious belief is enough when you’re surrounded with thousands of them.

It’s him.

-  
 _Circle me and the needle moves gracefully_  
Back and forth, if my heart was a compass you'd be North  
Risk it all cause I'll catch you if you fall  
Wherever you go, if my heart was a house you'd be home


End file.
